David Greene replied: So the question, of course, is, "why do you keep voting for them?" Is it possible that other issues are more important to most citizens than the stadium, to the degree that they'll vote for pro-stadium legislators because of a stand on a more important issue? This is healthy politics, not a power grab.
If everyone is so against a stadium, I haven't seen it at the polls.
Mark Anderson replies back:
Well, it's hard not to vote for them when they change their minds after the
election. As I stated above, I believe Rybak was elected partially because
he seemed to be against spending taxpayer dollars on large projects that
only had indirect benefits to the people in the city. It was SSB's support
for many of these projects that led to the end of her regime. So we DID
vote against them, but it didn't seem to have any effect.
So the next question is, "how will you hold RT accountable?"
Of course there is also the fact that running the city involves much more than opining on a stadium, so voters will consider many other issues than the stadium, just as you suggested. If the voters agree with one candidate on 5 out of 10 issues, and another one on 7 out of 10 issues, presumably they'll vote for the latter, even though the elected candidate will act against the majority in 3 out of 10 cases. Another good reason to have initiative and referendum -- it allows the majority of people to be in charge more often than does a strictly representative one. I think we should maximize the number of people who agree with the government's actions. The stadium issue is just the most obvious case where the people's wishes are ignored.
If we do that we are choosing a very different system of government than we have now. I oppose I&R because it is unwieldy. These are complex issues that, quite frankly, we don't have time to research and become experts on. I've been working on transportation during pretty much all of my spare time for the last nine months. It's _extremely_ complex and I would not want public transportation budgets to go to referendums. I certainly don't understand all the complexities of state money, federal matching dollars, impact studies, etc. I have a pretty good grasp of why a sales tax is a good way to fund public transportation but it took a lot of work to get there.
If the majority of people want a fundamentally different system of government for our state (direct democracy), let's put it up for a vote as a constitutional amendment. Let's not try to slip it in the back door. California operates with a great deal of I&R. Everyone should research how that system works before proposing it here.
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